


Fleeting

by anoyo



Category: Inheritance Cycle - Paolini
Genre: Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-02
Updated: 2008-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:44:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoyo/pseuds/anoyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eragon and Murtagh run into one another between the events of <span class="u">Eldest</span> and <span class="u">Brisingr</span> and are forced to verbally confront the battle that neither of them want to have.  Spoilers for <span class="u">Eldest</span>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fleeting

**Author's Note:**

> Day two of 25 Days of Christmas, written for [Ashley](http://probablefutures.wordpress.com/). I honestly didn't think I could write Murtagh/Eragon without it being dark, but I tried my damnedest. Also, uhm, spoilers for Eragon and Eldest, but not for Brisingr. You can kind of "Timeline, What Timeline?" this fic, but just pretend there's more time between Eldest and Brisingr and stick it there, okay? Beta'd by [Zanzou](http://zanzou-chan.livejournal.com) even though she really doesn't like Eragon and doesn't know much about the canon. (Even despite its length! She just loves me.) The prompt for [Ashley](http://probablefutures.wordpress.com/) was: Murtagh/Eragon, "Once more, with ninjas." Originally posted [here](http://anoyo.livejournal.com/128652.html).

Eragon had taken as late to soliloquizing on long flights -- or perhaps monologuing, as Saphira could hear his thoughts, of course, but generally chose not to comment, for fear that commenting would make him keep bloody going -- on subjects like the purpose of human life, or his unenviable fate in fighting his own brother, or for the other less appropriate reasons he didn't want to fight his brother, or really just how much he didn't want to think about this revelation at all.

Saphira had a tendency to hide a chuckle in a cough whenever his rambling thoughts wound down, as he tended to universally end in something like, "Arghmphgle."

Currently, Eragon was contemplating the meaning of extremely painful buttocks and why on earth Nasuada would think it was just that imperative that he and Saphira fly straight through to a random point in the middle of the Beors. He had found, strangely, that whining about the pained feeling in his ass actually helped to relieve the pain, even if just through the not-thinking-about-it-by-thinking-about-it method.

_You know that you could be paying more attention to our surroundings instead of whining, right?_ Saphira's voice echoed in Eragon's head, causing him to smirk.

Laughing, Eragon replied, _I have wonderful subconscious awareness. Psychic, even. And, anyway, who would know that we're in the middle of the Beors? I mean, I only barely know where we are. I rely on you for that sort of thing. We're surrounded by a span of identical mountains, so even if someone could scry us, what on earth would they find out? 'Middle of the Beors, got it!' isn't going to get them very far._

Saphira chuckled in her flame-spewing manner. _Flippancy means something bad's going to happen for sure, young one._

_Actually_, Eragon replied,_ you saying things like that means something bad's going to happen. You probably jinxed us._

As luck and divine intervention would have it, one of the two was right, though both would forever claim it to be the other's fault, in between bouts of incessant teasing.

Those "psychic skills" Eragon had brought into mention rang out in their tripped-alarm way, pointing his attention quickly to the Northwest. It took he and Saphira precisely half a second to realize just who exactly had located them, as only two other traveling dragons existed in the world, so far as they knew, and one of them was too masterful to do any work himself (and perhaps a little out of his gourd).

And, of course, Eragon had a scripted reaction for instances like this:

"Well, damn."

_We should probably land_, Saphira said, going into a more serious battle mode more quickly than Eragon, due to no internal strife and emotional turmoil. Made things easier.

Using his right hand to rub the palm of his left hand, an unfortunate nervous gesture, Eragon replied, _Why, so they can dive on us?_

Saphira shook her head quickly, said, _That's not Thorn's intent. If we land, so will they._

_And he told you this?_ Eragon asked, furrowing his eyebrows in Thorn's direction.

_He didn't have to. I can smell pain; whatever they're doing to mature him faster seems to hurt incredibly. If he can foist the fight off on you two humans, he's more than willing. He'll step in if it looks like it's going badly, but he feels it won't._ Saphira turned to make a cautious bee-line for the ground.

Eragon raised an eyebrow at Saphira now. _There's no way you inferred all of that. Unless you've stolen my psychic powers, anyway._

_If they're your psychic powers, you wouldn't have had to ask me, now would you?_ Saphira's voice itself was smirking, but she continued before Eragon could huffily reply. _No, I didn't infer that, though. I asked him. When he's not trying to kill me, he's incredibly polite, if childish. Probably a result of the forced growth; something had to stay behind to keep his sanity. He even told me how they found us and what they're here for. Apparently Galbatorix never told them that they couldn't._

_Not particularly clever of him, unless he just thought they wouldn't tell us of their own accord. Murtagh might not have, really, without a reason to._ Eragon sighed a bit, remembering an old soliloquy.

Saphira's landing snapped him out of it, as did her words, _Not the time, Eragon. Unless you're planning on sharing it aloud; it might be nicely distracting, at any rate._

As he slid off Saphira's side, Eragon gave her a nice slap to the side. _Ha, very ha._ He drew a borrowed sword from its sheath and simply held it down by his side. It wasn't at the ready, but Eragon was willing to wait and see what was going to happen. As of late, his meetings with Murtagh hadn't gone even in the realm of how he'd expected them to. The chances of this meeting being any different? Well, he wouldn't bet a fight that didn't need to happen on it.

Thorn landed, just as Saphira had said he would, a hundred feet away in the smallish clearing they had found. Murtagh slid off Thorn much the same way Eragon had slid off Saphira, drawing his sword upon hitting the ground. The mixed emotions Eragon felt at seeing the sword he'd received from Brom, which had belonged before that to Morzan -- _his father_ \-- were enough to do away with the last of his good humor. His face slipped into a mask, devoid of emotion.

A few steps toward Eragon were taken, and then, "Are you ready?" Murtagh asked, raising Zar'roc to an utterly familiar guard stance.

A slight nod as Eragon raised his own blade to a fighting position, taking a moment to strengthen it magically, as though that would raise its odds of standing up to a Forsworn blade. "As ever," he said softly as the distance closed mutually and a metallic screech of blade-on-blade frightened most of the living presences Eragon had felt in the clearing much farther away.

They spun, clashed, danced, in a mockery of what they'd done what felt like years ago. Falling into the rhythm they'd once held, each knowing what the other would do, a new trick thrown in here or there.

Magic, surprisingly, remained untouched. Eragon was unwilling to be the first to choose a spell, and so waited instead, but Murtagh did not deliver.

As they continued their dance, neither really tiring, Eragon took to watching their moves more closely, until they began to remind him of something else. It took a moment to place, but eventually he did: a book Jeod had lent him. The book was a romanticized adventure, set in a land that wasn't here, which fascinated Eragon and later irritated him when Jeod refused to tell him where he'd gotten the book.

Eragon's mind began relating to him the events of the book, remembered well for the interest he had taken in them, and the moves of his own fight seemed to correlate. The hero had been fighting his former best friend, a fight that he did not want to partake in, but had to for the good of the cause. The two had been friends most of their lives, and shared many stories and adventures, and in the middle of this fight, a fight that turned out to be the penultimate fight of the novel, the hero had begun to reminisce to himself about the good times. Eragon could feel that, could see flashes of fights he and Murtagh had had before, and was drawn by the irony.

A bitter irony, but irony nonetheless, and when the fight reached the proper timing, Eragon said along with the hero in his memory of the book, "Once more, with ninjas!" before beginning to laugh. His laughter forced a defensive parry where an offensive strike at Murtagh might have gone, due to the other man's understandable confusion at what on earth Eragon was talking about (and whether or not the younger man had found a bush he shouldn't have eaten from).

When Eragon couldn't stop laughing, Murtagh paused the fight, stepping back as Eragon held a rib and laughed, ignoring Saphira's concerned thought of, _I think all that philosophizing has broken your brain._

As Eragon laughed, Murtagh's eyebrows drew together and he scowled, finally asking, pointing at Eragon with Zar'roc, a gesture so similar to that in the novel that Eragon merely laughed harder, "Are you mocking me?"

Between laughs, and with tearing eyes, Eragon said breathily, "No, no. It's a fine fight," before devolving into more laughter.

The surreal nature of the fight from the beginning -- starting with Thorn's not participating, changing to Murtagh's not using his added strength to forcibly win the battle, and now culminating in Eragon's erratic laugher -- led Eragon to conclude, between laugh-hazed thoughts, that the fight had never been intended to accomplish anything violent. He didn't know what else it could be, but the pheromones seeping out of and around him prevented him rather massively from caring.

Laughter finally dying down, Eragon pulled an expectant face, eyebrows raised appropriately, and said, "You're supposed to pose now and say something like, 'I don't need any help!'"

This response caused Murtagh's eyebrows to furrow further, a rather unattractive gesture. "You are mocking me!" he exclaimed, bringing his sword into a ready position again.

Eragon dropped his sword to his side and waved his left hand placatingly. "Really, I'm not. It's just the response." He laughed a little at Murtagh's expression quickly going from angered to a mixture of confused and confounded. "Our fight reminded me of a book I read. Same gestures, types of characters, and so on. Apparently my impulse-control is out to tea, and so I said the line of one of the characters. In the book, it meant having others join in to help, or cheat, or whatnot." Murtagh's eyebrows furrowed again, and Eragon shrugged. "I just found it funny."

Finally lowering his sword to his side, not a gesture particularly common to battles between sworn enemies, as though he were humoring Eragon, Murtagh said slowly, "So you stopped in the middle of a fight. A fight with swords, real swords, at a skill level that is more than just potentially dangerous, to reminisce about a book?"

Said like that, Eragon couldn't help but laugh, and Saphira rolled her eyes in the background. "I suppose so," he replied, grinning. "Though it didn't really feel like you were trying to kill me at all. I mean, I usually get at least nicked in occasions like that. That, and Saphira said Thorn wasn't particularly concerned, and, really, I've been flying for nineteen hours and just getting out of the saddle was rather like an opiate."

"So, you, what? Decided we weren't actually fighting, even though we were swinging big, heavy, professional blades at one another, and chose a literary conversation instead?" Murtagh asked.

"Ah, yes, sort of. I guess." Eragon chuckled again. "I sound like a madman, don't I, put like that?"

_More than sort of_, Saphira put in. From Murtagh's expression, she'd let him in on her comment. _Though where this is unusual, I fail to see._

At this, finally, Murtagh smirked and addressed Saphira. "Thorn told you why we were here, didn't he?"

_That he did_, she replied, curling her tail around her legs, a gesture of comfort rather than of battle readiness.

"Am I going to be let in on the secret? Or joke, as it were?" Eragon asked, raising an eyebrow.

Exchanging a glance with Thorn, more amused than anything else, Murtagh replied, "Sure. We were told to find and bring back something from the mountains. Finding you two was entirely accidental, and something Galbatorix didn't think of when forcing us. He did say, at one point, that I would be fighting you every time I saw you, but our live-action of your silly novel apparently covers that base." He shrugged. "I suppose this is simply an interlude to our war. A fluke." Murtagh's expression was surface-light, but his eyes reflected a darker feeling, more recently common.

"A fluke that is unlikely to happen again, I take it," Eragon said calmly, letting out a breath. "Especially since I'm sure he'll find a way to make you tell him it occurred."

Murtagh shrugged. "Of course. I have to report every detail he might find important, a compulsion that makes me unable to even skip over things I might find loopholes for."

"I see," Eragon said, considering. A consideration that made Saphira snort fire, which resulted in a raised eyebrow from Murtagh.

_And I thought you'd filled your quota of ridiculously awful ideas,_ Saphira muttered, allowing both Eragon and Murtagh to hear her, Thorn's snort insinuating that he, too, had heard.

Casually, Eragon turned and sheathed his sword, brushing off his hands. With a sort of smirk, he asked, "I won't be needing that, will I?"

"Not unless you do something to upset me," Murtagh said dryly, slipping Zar'roc into the sheath around his waist. "Though it's not one of the brightest ideas you've ever had."

"It's a day for bad ideas, then," Eragon said with a smile, walking casually toward Murtagh, stopping only when he was less than a foot away.

"I see that," Murtagh said, puzzled, but not moving any further away.

Eragon pursed his lips. "I have to wonder," he said, keeping a curious expression.

"About what?" Murtagh obliged, crossing his arms and then changing his mind, dropping them to his sides, an almost nervous gesture.

Letting the obviously faked curiosity go, instead adopting a slightly predatory expression, comfortable on his face from years of hunting, Eragon said, "About what Galbatorix finds important." Warning enough had been given with Eragon's proximity, implied and dangerous, Eragon reached out to grab the front of Murtagh's shirt, pulling him down and kissing him. Kissing him warmly, another old, comfortable gesture. It was, perhaps, a day for those, too.

Murtagh's muscle memory supplied the instruction to put his arms around Eragon's waist before he even thought about it, Saphira's exaggerated sigh in the background as familiar as anything else. It was, in fact, Thorn's, _Aww, how cute,_ something not associated with any memories similar to this that rang the what-the-hell-am-I-doing bell in his head.

Grasping either side of Eragon's shirt near his waist, Murtagh pulled the other man backward. "You have the most idiotic and inappropriate timing of anyone I've ever met," he said bluntly, catching his breath as Eragon smirked. "The degree to which this is _such a horrible idea_ is not even a number known to man."

Keeping one hand fisted in the front of Murtagh's shirt, Eragon led the other around his neck to his hairline, continuing to smirk. "That's probably true. Though, really, it was almost as horrible and idea then, too, the only difference is that we didn't know about it."

Murtagh groaned and knocked his forehead into Eragon's. "I hadn't even factored that in. I had, in fact, been avidly ignoring it, for the sake of my sanity." Self-control lost its footing, and Murtagh released the fabric of Eragon's shirt, instead letting his arms slide back around his waist, pulling the younger man into a familiar hug. "I was only adding in what a field day Galbatorix will have with what I just found out," he said, sighing in a purposefully melodramatic fashion.

"And that is?" Eragon asked, attempting to keep from smirking and failing. Fortunately, the smirk itself was to hide the contented smile he was most inclined to be giving, and that was safely hidden.

A hand slid around Eragon's hip, readjusting his position against Murtagh's chest. "The fact that you apparently cannot hold mental walls while kissing someone," he said, a fact Eragon had not been expecting.

The smile faded a little, and Eragon asked, more a statement than a question, "And this is something he'll find important?"

"Of course." Softly.

"Expect it to never happen again?" Calm, but mellowed.

Murtagh leaned back a little, looking into Eragon's face. "If it does, expect it to have another aim entirely," he said softly, letting a small, sad smile cross his face.

Eragon kept Murtagh's gaze, calmly, softly, before a gleam took over whatever might have been in his eyes, and a smile spread across his lips comfortably. "Then we might as well," he said softly, smile and gleam dancing a little, "make it something to really tell him about."

And Murtagh agreed, as had always been his wont in these situations, tightening his arms and obliging the guiding hand in his hair, kissing the younger man softly, then not softly, and finally honestly. An honest kiss, desperate, final, foreboding, and all of these painful emotions only making him cling more tightly.

When he pulled back, more for air than anything else, Murtagh asked between breaths, "Eragon? Are we really making out? In a grove? In the middle of the Beors? In front of our dragons?"

The join background snicker of Saphira and Thorn, who Eragon and Murtagh could surmise had been both watching them and having their own conversation, elicited a laugh from Eragon, who leaned himself further into Murtagh's chest.

"I think there's another little grove right over there," Eragon said, snickering and gesturing between a tree and bush to the East.

Leaning down and kissing Eragon again, no semblance of a fight remaining, Murtagh said, "That sounds like a wonderful idea," and started walking Eragon backwards toward it, still kissing him intermittently.

As they went, Saphira added, voice amused, _You know that leaving our sight has no impact on our being able to stay connected to you, right?_

Before either human could reply, Thorn cut in, surprising them all with, _Give them their idea of privacy. We can go hunting. I'm hungry._

While Saphira snickered and agreed, Eragon laughed to Murtagh, "How'd I wind up with the sarcastic one, and you got the nice one?"

Murtagh replied first by kissing him and shoving him backward over a bush, then with, "Because you're the one that needs the babysitting. Now shut up."


End file.
